The Return Home
What is home during a genocide?
What is home during a genocide? Almost all of Gaza’s built environment has been decimated—by January 2025, UNRWA and MSF reported that 92% of homes in Gaza had been destroyed by the Zionist military. Now, that number is likely close to 100% of homes either entirely or partially destroyed.
In September, when the Zionist State forced evacuations of Gaza City (again) and drove people to flee from the North to the South, The Sameer Project set up a Displacement Response Campaign to help those who were elderly, ill, or otherwise struggling with mobility issues to get to (relative) safety. Now, that campaign has become The Return Home — help for folks stuck in the South to get back “home” to the North. Where, most likely, they will find that their homes have been entirely destroyed (if they weren’t already). This week we sent $100 to this campaign: Speaking of returning home — my friend Mona and her family moved into a new home yesterday. Meaning, after their own home was destroyed, after living without shelter, after living in a tent, after suffering through the horrors of displacement, they now can rent a mostly dilapidated apartment without a functional roof. Most immediately, they need $400 to offset moving expenses. If you have the resources, please help her by donating here.
What the Zionist State is doing to Mona and everyone else in Gaza is domicide. Two weeks ago at the Gaza tribunal, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, spoke on a panel about domicide, which he defines as “the mass destruction of housing, residential buildings, homes, property, and civilian infrastructure” and explained that it is “the most visible, recorded, and unique element of the war on Gaza since 2023.” He clarified: “When such domicide is systematic and widespread and accompanied by genocidal intent, it constitutes war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.”
What is lost when a home is destroyed? What does it take to rebuild a home?
Mohamed Al Helou, a journalist based in Gaza, also spoke on that panel. He reminded us that the story of a house is also the story of the 14 people who live in that house, the cats who live with them, the trees who surround them, the oranges they harvest and eat in the summer. A house is the marks on the walls, the pictures on the shelves. The school papers and family albums and battered books in piles by the side of a bed. Every home is an archive, every home holds a story. The Zionist State has destroyed the material life of almost every single story in Gaza.
Domicide is one of the most powerful tools of genocide — it’s the retraction of yesterday, the threat on today, the grim promise of what can still be destroyed tomorrow. Or, as Al Helou reminded us: “Even if someone is safe today, they are not safe tomorrow.” No one is Gaza is safe. No one in Gaza will be safe as long as the Zionist State continues to exist and the Zionist military is allowed to continue its genocide and ethnic cleansing (slower now, but with the same impunity and ongoing support — namely, from the US, meaning we in the West are all complicit).
When someone loses their home they lose their sense of safety and their sense of self. Domicide is about breaking the sense of self of everyone still living in Gaza. And yet, in this way, the Zionist State is losing. They are killing and they are destroying, but Gaza always rebuilds. Gaza is rebuilding now. Please help The Sameer Project as they help people return home so they can rebuild their lives.
As a parting thought — I’m really struggling with optimism and hope these days, as I know a lot of you are. But also — if you are on Twitter, I highly recommend you watch this video of The Sameer Project/Translating Falasteen team cleaning streets and buildings and putting up tarps for four households. “In addition to the laborious work, in order to bring joy for the children, we arranged a Dabke dance performance and distributed falafel to people in the area.” There was joy in this work, joy as a form of resistance, joy as a refusal to allow the depraved and ongoing violence of the Zionist genocide to destroy everything. Hope and joy exist in shared moments of connection and community. This is something the Zionist State will never understand and that is why, eventually, they will cease to exist. They know only destruction and violence. They know nothing of what actually makes a life or a world beyond their own blood lust and thirst for other people’s land. But Palestine knows what makes a life, Palestinians in Gaza generously show those of us outside of Gaza what that looks like everyday. Long live Palestine, long live the intifada, long live Gaza, who will always rise above Zionist-led destruction.
This writing first appeared on Nov. 6, 2025, on Maura Finkelstein’s Substack: https:// maurafinkelstein.substack.com/